Last Friday, Dutch state secretary Heynen (Ministry of Infrastructure & Waterstate) decided that the Eurostar train between Amsterdam and London will not be proposed for eleven months, starting June 2024.

The reason? Amsterdam Central Station has to be overhauled, and apparently, there’s no room during the works period to house the Dutch Marechaussee (police force), which has to control passengers before boarding.

Eurostar has announced that it continues talking to the Dutch railway company NS, infrastructure provider ProRail, and the Dutch Ministry to find a solution and avoid a service stop.

“We are persuaded that a direct train liaison between Amsterdam and London can be retained,” says Eurostar after CEO Gwendoline Cazenave met the other parties in Den Haag. “Eurostar is firmly decided to play a role in the Dutch quest for sustainability by offering a green travel alternative.”

Raised eyebrows

The Dutch coalition ‘Anders Reizen’, regrouping more than 70 larger Dutch employers who want to reduce their business travel CO2 emissions, are shocked. “It’s unclear which sustainable travel alternatives the business traveler to London will be offered,” comments Anders Reizen. “We don’t even know if passengers in Rotterdam Central will still be allowed to board or that this will be the temporary starting point for the Eurostar?”

Anders Reizen considers this 11-month stop of a fast and comfortable link between the Dutch and the English capital a significant risk. Now the routine of business travelers was changing, and many preferred the train to the plane, everything is questioned again. This has caused more than a few raised eyebrows.

The members of the coalition Anders Reizen have commonly decided that destinations within 700 km of the company headquarters have to be reached by train as much as possible. It can’t be that a pure housing problem for police control causes such drastic decisions. Then, maybe, this police control can again be done in Brussels, as it happened when the train link was started.